If you’ve been craving a little more NSFW weirdness in your superhero diet, fear not. Doom Patrol: Season 2 is here, and this time the series is airing on both DC Universe and HBO Max. Season 2 will continue to explore how this odd band of misfit heroes struggles to come together as a family and a team, but with a few key differences. They’re joined by Abigail Shapiro’s Dorothy Spinner, the Chief’s dangerously powerful daughter. They’ll also be squaring off with a whole range of new enemies, including the Candlemaker, Red Jack, and even a government-sponsored team known as the SeX-Men.
To get a better idea of just how the series is evolving in its second season, we chatted with showrunner Jeremy Carver. Read on to learn more about these new characters and storylines and why Season 2 is shorter than the first.
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Bringing Doom Patrol to HBO Max
Fan were surprised to learn at Comic-Con 2019 that Doom Patrol Season 2 will debut simultaneously on DC Universe and HBO Max. How would that move affect the tone or direction of the series, if at all? Why Doom Patrol and not other DCU series like Titans?
Carver doesn’t necessarily have any insight into the corporate decision-making that led to this switch, but he told us the day-to-day process of writing and producing Doom Patrol hasn’t been impacted one way or the other. In that regard, it’s very much business as usual for the series.
“I was thrilled that we were picked up for a Season 2 and I was thrilled that this arrangement was made, which to me just means the show is able to be seen hopefully by even more people,” he said. “That’s about the extent to which I can comment on it if only because I truly don’t know the machinations behind how and why.”
He continued, “We basically embraced a new partner, back in the days when you could still embrace somebody, pre-pandemic. And HBO Max has been absolutely terrific to work with. They, wanted the show because they loved the show and they wanted us to continue exactly what we were doing in the way that we’d always been doing it. So it’s been a very seamless transition.”
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How the Team Is Moving Forward
Doom Patrol is heavily centered around trauma and the struggle to move beyond that pain. While all the main characters made great strides over the course of Season 1, the ghosts of their respective troubled pasts remain. Season 2 will explore the latest complication in their lives, dealing with the fallout of the revelation that the Chief, Niles Caulder, was responsible for the accidents that destroyed their lives and transformed them into metahuman outcasts.
When asked how characters like Cliff Steele and Rita Farr are handling this knowledge, Carver said, “They’ve always viewed him as someone to lean on, as this father figure. And when you realize that the father figure in many ways is a fraud, it suddenly leaves you a little bit more exposed than you were even the day before … Some of our characters are very much in denial at the beginning of Season 2, but eventually – and this becomes a major theme of the season – all of our characters realize at some point here, ‘I’m going to have to grow up. Even as an adult, I’m going to have to grow up and we’re going to have to face these things without the benefit of leaning on someone like Niles.'”
Despite this new round of emotional suffering, the trailers for Season 2 hint that the team may be moving forward and working to grow from outcasts and loners to legitimate superheroes. In particular, the trailers show Rita training with Cyborg and working to better control her stretching powers.
Carver said, “Different members of the team are in different places. So, Rita had a sort of an inward journey last year that, despite everything, and even despite the Chief’s admission, left her actually in a fairly positive place in that her focus at the top of the season is, ‘Love me. I have put all that trauma behind me and maybe I see it as the springboard or the opportunity to make good things come from what I saw as my curse … How do I become a superhero here?’ And I think she is much more ahead of the rest of the group in this regard. But even she will come to understand pretty soon in the season that all the things that have happened during her life and all the generational trauma, particularly her relationship with her mother, that’s not done with her yet. She’s got a lot more to get through before she can get past all the scar tissue that she has been wearing all these years.”
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Who Is Doom Patrol’s Dorothy Spinner?
Season 1 ended with the debut of the Chief’s long-lost daughter Dorothy, with Abigail Shapiro later cast in the role for Season 2. Carver teased that she won’t exactly be met with a warm welcome right off the bat.
“Dorothy is just thrown into the fire here. I mean, she is delightful, but she is the reason why they are what they are. So it’s a pretty awkward way to enter a party, when you’re already entering with a target on your back. But what makes it even a little bit harder for the Doom Patrol to swallow her presence is, even if they don’t know it yet, we the audience understand pretty much from the beginning that Dorothy has dealt with traumas and experiences and a level of seclusion and been ostracized on a level that is equal to, if not more than what the members of the Doom Patrol had dealt with.”
But however much Dorothy may struggle to find her place among the team, Carver feels Shapiro’s casting is a huge boon for the series.
“Casting Dorothy all went actually remarkably smoothly because Abigail Shapiro was one of the first, if not the first person we saw,” he said. “It was an absolute no-brainer in how extraordinarily talented she was. And then finding someone who was willing to go through all that prosthetics work every day on set. You know, she was totally game for it and she was wonderful. I can’t say enough incredible things about not just her work ethic, but her talent. I mean, she was a shot in the arm to the show.”
He continued, “She is a more sort of youthful presence on the show, which very deliberately does add another ingredient into the already sort of tumultuous chemistry of the team. And she’s so unique and so herself that, to us, it was just another wonderful ingredient to introduce to the stew.”
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Doom Patrol Season 2’s New Villains
The second trailer for Doom Patrol Season 2 revealed several new villains, along with a handful of returning characters like magician Willoughby Kipling (Mark Sheppard) and Flex Mentallo (Devan Chandler Long). But perhaps no one made a flashier debut than the SeX-Men, a government-sponsored team that specializes in paranormal sexual events. Given the name of the team and the similarities between the X-Men and Doom Patrol franchises, we were curious if the SeX-Men are meant to be a direct parody of that iconic Marvel team.
“Not too much,” said Carver. “I can tell you that the episode in which the SeX-Men appear, for a show that went to fairly nutty lengths last season, I think this exceeds even some of the things we did last season in terms of mouth-dropping places that we go. I really loved the episode. I don’t think people are going to expect what’s coming.”
The second trailer also gives us an early glimpse of the Candlemaker, a powerful psychic entity with a lifelong connection to Dorothy. In the comics, Dorothy is haunted by the Candlemaker because her ability to turn imagination into reality can provide this villain the doorway it craves back into our universe. Carver confirmed the series will follow the general outline of the comics, albeit it with deviations along the way, saying, “We are painting that character in that role in many ways.”
But as for whether the Candlemaker is meant to be the overarching villain of Season 2, Carver hinted at some unexpected developments along the way. “I think you have to watch more to get to the root of what’s going on,” he teased.
With Alan Tudyk’s flamboyantly devious Mr. Nobody being one of the highlights of Season 1, fans may be wondering if there’s a chance the character will resurface down the road. Carver is certainly eager to bring Tudyk back into the fold, but it doesn’t sound as if there are any immediate plans.
Carver said, “You know, I say this with no inside information, only hopes and inspiration, there’s always an interest in bringing someone back as marvelously talented as Alan Tudyk. I would never say no to one like Alan Tudyk. He’s amazing.”
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Why Doom Patrol Season 2 Is Only 9 Episodes
While it’s good to have Doom Patrol back on the air, as it were, fans should brace themselves for a much shorter season this time around. Whereas Season 1 clocked in at 15 episodes, Season 2 will only run for nine episodes. But as it turns out, there’s a good reason for this shorter format that has nothing to do with pacing or budgetary concerns. Instead, the COVID-19 pandemic is to blame.
As Carver explained, Doom Patrol faced the same problem so many movie and TV productions have in 2020. The decision was made to suspend production and end Season 2 sooner than planned, similar to how several Arrowverse series like The Flash, Supergirl, and Batwoman ended their recent seasons. But the good news is that Carver feels Episode 9 will make for a proper season finale, even if it doesn’t necessarily resolve every loose end.
Carver explained, “We were three days away from completing our 10th episode when the shutdown hit. And so we were not able to complete our 10th episode. But very luckily we had a ninth episode that, when we included a little of what we shot from episode 10, really actually fit well into the finale model. [It was] very fortuitous in that way, that 9 was already set up with a structure that lent itself to finishing some things about the season while still leaving some things in doubt.”
And if anything, Carver is hopeful this early conclusion will make fans even more eager for a potential Season 3.
“I’m just going to be very honest, [there are] probably a few more things left in doubt than were meant to be, you know? But again, I choose to see that as a good problem to have in terms of folks wanting to see more and wondering what’s happening. But we were able to wrap a couple things up as well.”
The first three episodes of Doom Patrol: Season 2 will debut on DC Universe and HBO Max on Thursday, June 25.
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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
Source: IGN.com Doom Patrol Showrunner on Season 2's New Heroes and Villains